Tax, honesty and the General Election

The General Election is just over a fortnight away, excuse enough surely for a brief return to the political blogging that considerations of life's shortness brought to an end some time ago.

Last night I went to the hustings in a church where our local candidates were on display.  I managed an hour of it.  The Labour candidate was a fanatically intense dark-eyed Scot whose accent caused a perceptible chilling of the atmosphere (thanks to the SNP for this new development in Anglo-Scottish relationships).  An Independent had a Shoreditch beard and top knot, bringing hipster style to the suburbs; hats off to him for having a go, but his pitch - no cuts are necessary and we just need to tax the rich more - was predictably utopian and lazy.  It was still widely applauded, mind.  The Lib Dem incumbent was a mousy little man, bland of utterance until he was heckled from the floor about tuition fees.  His Tory challenger wore the defiant blue of a Thatcher twin-set and spoke perhaps more than was necessary about her business experience.  The UKIP man was surprisingly cuddly and nice, although totally inept: truly the quality of its candidates peaks at Mr Farage and then goes sharply downhill. Lastly another Independent with an anti European stance floundered through an opening statement but then proved surprisingly capable in argument.

I left early partly because I always feel uneasy in this Church.  The hustings were chaired by the vicar: if you're reading, Rob the Rector, welcoming electors with a snide remark about their non-attendance at other times of the year is not the way to fill pews.  But I was also struck by the futility of the exercise.  The candidates I liked most personally - the UKIP man and the Independent woman - were not remotely credible as MPs or as recipients of the discerning vote. But more bleakly, neither are the two main political parties.

This is the most dishonest general election I can remember.  Labour overspent during its glory years, telling us that it had put an end to boom and bust; it then decried the need for any cuts (remember "Labour investment versus Tory cuts"?) saying that there would never be any growth under Tory austerity; then when there was growth they said it was the wrong sort; then when this turned out to be wrong as well they said they would cut more slowly and fairly than the Tories; finally, abruptly, they now claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Shameless.

As for the Tories, when their lacklustre campaign based on the premise that the choice is between chaos and competence appears to be faltering, they promise £8 billion of uncosted extra health spending in a vain attempt to hijack Labour's pro-NHS reputation. Pathetic.

Voting on the basis of what the parties say they're going to do is pointless. You may think this particularly applies to the Lib Dems, after their volte face on tuition fees (although ironically, the system which replaced Labour's was fairer and has encouraged people from poorer families to go to university). Take a clothes peg in the ballot box, take a deep breath and vote for what you think the parties are actually going to do.

In this morning's Times the IFS's Paul Johnson complains of the "narrative that there is a magic money tree that we can pluck at will.  There isn't. . . Tax and welfare changes since the recession have left middle Britain largely unscathed, while hitting the rich hardest and taking benefits from the poorest.  This can't go on.  If we want to reduce the deficit, or maintain plublic services, we will have to pay.  Not someone else.  Or we'll pay in the end by both chasing away wealth creation and increasing poverty".

I think this is the debate we're going to end up having. It's just a shame that seven years after the crash we're still not grown up enough to have it.